Culture in transition: skills, collaboration and new models of operation in Europe
The cultural and creative sector is increasingly operating at the intersection of several parallel processes: accelerating technological transformation, a growing need for sustainability, and changing models of work and collaboration in Europe. In this issue, we explore these tensions from various perspectives – from the development of young creators’ skills and new educational tools, through international forums on research and public policy, to local initiatives testing the green transition in practice.
On the one hand, we look at how to build realistic career paths within the sector (Empowering Youth Talents); on the other, how to shape working conditions and mobility on a European scale (MSCA, CAE, BEYOND); and, in parallel, we examine how these principles translate into concrete local actions (GreenCCircle Living Labs). We also do not overlook the role of artificial intelligence, which is having an increasingly strong influence on creative practices, career models and legal frameworks.
This is a set of activities that may seem scattered, but in reality answer a single question: how to create a more conscious, resilient and effective cultural sector. In the following sections, you will find both summaries and specific invitations to participate in events and initiatives. Do join us!
Wenancjusz Ochmann
Vice-President of the ARTeria Foundation
APRIL 2026
Visit the Empowering Your Talents project website
Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, Rousseau – without formal artistic training, yet with a huge influence on art history. In the cultural and creative sectors, it is not just qualifications that count, but above all skills, courage and action.
Culture fosters creativity, empathy and agency, but the market also demands flexibility, collaboration and entrepreneurship. The problem is that education often fails to keep pace with the speed of change.
That is why we have created a project that combines art with gamification, escape rooms and practical action – because talent is just the beginning. We help to turn it into real skills and opportunities.
Visit the project website and follow the next stages and results. The website is available in English, Polish, Italian, French and Macedonian.
Research careers beyond borders: 30 years of the MSCA
The international conference ‘Research careers beyond borders: 30 years of the MSCA’ took place on 22–25 April 2026 in Brussels. Anna Ochmann, President of the ARTeria Foundation and a member of the MCAA, took part in this year’s event.
The annual MCAA conference served as a key forum for knowledge exchange between the scientific community, decision-makers and innovation practitioners, focusing on the future of research and academic mobility in Europe.
The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) is an international non-profit organisation bringing together individuals who are currently benefiting from, or have previously benefited from, funding under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme.
The MCAA community comprises researchers and professionals at various stages of their careers, representing a wide range of disciplines and sectors. Although members share a research background, their career paths often extend beyond the academic environment. The Association supports this diversity by offering opportunities for professional development, networking and advocacy that strengthen the long-term impact of the MSCA programme.
The MCAA was established with the support of the European Commission, but its activities are largely based on member engagement and a bottom-up model of collaboration.
Within the MCAA, Anna Ochmann served on two working groups: one focusing on the development of sustainable research practices and the other on the role of artificial intelligence in research.
Participation in the MCAA 2026 conference marked the next stage in the development of the ARTeria Foundation’s international collaboration, conducted at the intersection of research, public policy and cultural practices.
The third Local Living Lab as part of the GreenCCircle project in Pyskowice
GreenCCIrcle is a European initiative bringing together artists, cultural institutions, representatives of the creative industries, researchers and decision-makers around a single, specific challenge: how to prepare the cultural and creative sector for a genuine green transition. The project focuses not only on diagnosis, but above all on creating practical tools and spaces for collaboration.
As part of the project, educational materials for the GreenCCIrcle Academy and a toolkit available on the GreenCCIrcle HUB have been developed, supporting day-to-day work in the cultural and creative sector. Whilst these resources are important, local initiatives play a key role – particularly Living Lab-style meetings.
Living Labs provide a space for discussion, testing approaches and formulating recommendations: on how to implement the green transition in practice, rather than merely at the level of declarations. Two such meetings have already taken place in Gliwice as part of the project. The first was introductory in nature (see the short video summary), whilst the second was more practical, focusing on the experiences of artists and representatives of the creative industries, as well as specific ways of implementing ecological changes in creative activities.
The next step will be the third and final Living Lab, which will take place in Pyskowice in collaboration with MOKiS. This meeting aims to broaden the existing perspective and bring new contexts and participants into the conversation about the green transition in culture.
GreenCCircle project website https://greenccircle.eu/
GreenCCircle Academy https://www.xamk.fi/en/greenccircle-academy/
GreenCCircle HUB https://hub.greenccircle.eu/
Video about the project: https://youtu.be/m589B_EcnwA
City and Nature – Harmony and Diversity; V4 Literary and Artistic Relations
As part of the PesText 2026–2027 festival, co-funded by the Visegrad Fund, the programme “City and Nature – Harmony and Diversity; V4 Literary and Artistic Relations’ is being implemented, which addresses the significant tension between the intense cultural life in cities and an increasingly tenuous relationship with nature. The project is based on the premise that the future of cultural cooperation in the V4 region requires a conscious reconnection of these two realms – the urban and the natural – both in terms of audience experience and artistic practice.
PesText makes use of its unique locations – spaces overlooking Gellért Hill and adjacent to one of Budapest’s most beautiful parks – to create events at the intersection of literature, urban space and nature. At the same time, the project addresses another challenge: the limited visibility of ‘minor language’ literatures. In practice, this means that readers are more likely to reach for writers from dominant linguistic areas than for authors from neighbouring countries. The response is to promote contemporary V4 literature through new formats – from flash fiction, through translations of plays, to interdisciplinary activities.
The project’s activities are based on three pillars: mobility (meetings between creators, workshops, exhibitions), visibility (presenting authors and their works to a wider audience) and building connections (joint artistic activities and networking between communities). We already announced some of the events in the previous newsletter – below is the continuation of the programme.
From 7–9 May 2026, the ‘Colours, Shapes, Compositions’ illustration workshops will take place, led by Agata Dudek – co-founder of Acapulco Studio and one of the leading figures in contemporary Polish illustration. The three-day event will be an opportunity to learn about her approach to creative work and to collaborate with participants.
A meeting with Agata Dudek is scheduled for 9 May at 7.00 pm in Budapest. The conversation will be led by László Nagy from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), and the event will be accompanied by a guided tour of the exhibition.
On the same day at 8.00 pm, the festival will close with the exhibition Hello, Colors! Hello, Shapes!, showcasing the work of Acapulco Studio. The exhibition highlights the distinctive visual language of the duo Agata Dudek and Małgorzata Nowak-Żurek – based on geometry, intense colour and a conscious dialogue with the tradition of poster art. The studio, founded in Warsaw in 2012, is now one of the most recognisable illustration studios in Poland, and its work has won numerous international awards.
However, this is not the end of the project’s activities. We would like to invite you to the autumn edition and the next instalment of artistic collaboration in the region.
The ARTeria Foundation is a co-organiser of these events.
AI and copyright: is artificial intelligence a support or a threat to creators?
On 4 May 2026, from 12:00–13:00 CET, a free webinar entitled ‘AI and copyright: is artificial intelligence a support or a threat to creators?’ will take place. The session will be led by Onuur Emul and Ignacio Márquez, and will be conducted in English.
During the event, participants will examine specific AI tools that support artists’ work and the key issue of the boundary between inspiration and authorship. The functioning of the Creatives Unite platform will also be discussed, along with practical ways of using artificial intelligence consciously, without losing one’s own creative style. The session is practical in nature and focuses on real-world applications of the technology, rather than a general discussion of the role of AI in art.
The webinar is organised as part of the YOUR.AI project. Participation is free of charge, but prior registration is required:
Centre Satellite BEYOND – Resilient Ties
We invite you to take part in the international conference Centre Satellite BEYOND – Resilient Ties, which will take place on 19–20 May 2026 in Gdańsk, at the St. John’s Centre – one of the main venues of the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre.
The event is organised by the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in collaboration with Culture Action Europe as part of the BEYOND initiative – a European programme creating a space for joint reflection, exchange of experiences and advocacy within the cultural and creative sectors. BEYOND is being developed through a series of meetings across Europe, engaging cultural practitioners in a dialogue about the future of the sector.
The ARTeria Foundation is a member of Culture Action Europe and operates within the Polish HUB CAE, actively participating in European processes of cooperation and dialogue within the cultural sector.
The ‘Resilient Ties’ conference focuses on the concept of resilience – not as an individual trait, but as the result of relationships, solidarity and shared responsibility. In the context of Central and Eastern Europe, where the cultural sector faces political pressure, funding instability, restrictions on civic space and growing social uncertainty, the event proposes a shift in perspective: from expecting individual ‘resilience’ to analysing systemic and community conditions.
The programme – organised in a ‘lunch-to-lunch’ format – combines plenary discussions, workshops and more reflective, participatory working formats. Participants will address topics including solidarity in diverse contexts, wellbeing and burnout in cultural work, structural pressures on organisations, and issues of accessibility and participation in culture.
Participation in the conference is free of charge (the organisers do not cover travel and accommodation costs). The event will be held in English.
AI as an Opportunity: Fairer Work, Stronger Creativity, and Future-Proof Conditions for Artists and Creative Professionals
Anna Ochmann, President of the ARTeria Foundation, will take part in the international event #SDECE2026 – Strategic Dialogue on European Creative Economy and Cultural Autonomy, which will take place on 5 May in Brussels (AT60 – House of the Austrian Economy).
This year’s edition focuses on the role of artificial intelligence in the cultural and creative sector – not merely as a technology, but as a real factor shaping working conditions, remuneration models and the professional future of artists and creative professionals in Europe.
As part of the dialogue, participants – including representatives of EU institutions, the European Parliament, sectoral organisations, European projects, the academic community and the technology sector – will work to answer the key question: how to ensure that the development of AI strengthens, rather than undermines, creators’ rights and the stability of their careers.
The programme includes, among other things, high-level discussions on AI regulation and artists’ rights, work on recommendations for public policy in the context of the post-2027 EU budget, as well as issues related to skills development, micro-qualifications and adapting education systems to the pace of technological change.
Participation in #SDECE2026 forms part of the ARTeria Foundation’s activities at the intersection of culture, research and public policy, with a particular focus on the impact of new technologies and the green transition on the creative sector.
Looking back, thinking ahead: reflecting on ‘A Whole Formed by Itself’
On 30 April 2026, a meeting was held as part of the ArtFutures Fellowship programme, dedicated to the creative process of Felipe Steinberg – the artist selected for this year’s residency. The event was attended by Anna Ochmann, who was involved in the artist selection process for the programme.
The meeting, entitled ‘Looking back, thinking ahead: reflecting on “A Whole Formed by Itself”’, was a working session and focused on the artist’s developing project – a performative lecture based on long-term observation of life on a balcony in Athens. The project, based on hundreds of hours of footage, analyses the relationships between urban space, visibility and the repetitiveness of everyday behaviours, as well as broader social processes such as touristification and the transformation of the urban fabric.
Felipe Steinberg is a Brazilian-born artist, researcher and producer working at the intersection of visual arts, performance and curatorial practice. His works often refer to specific social and urban contexts, combining documentation with elements of fiction and speculative narrative. In the past, he has collaborated with, amongst others, documenta fifteen, where he was responsible for the public programme and co-created film-based activities, and his projects have been presented in institutions and at exhibitions worldwide. He currently lives and works in Athens, where he is developing his practice around the concepts of spatial dramaturgy and the social choreography of the city.
The ArtFutures Fellowship residency represents a crucial stage in the artist’s work on the project, enabling the development of material, experimentation with performative form, and consultations with mentors in the fields of dramaturgy and performance theory. The results of the programme will be presented at an exhibition in Athens in 2027.
The event included a work-in-progress presentation and a discussion with programme participants, moderated by Georgios Papadopoulos. Anna Ochmann’s participation forms part of the ARTeria Foundation’s broader engagement with international residency programmes and the development of transparent and high-quality artist selection processes
A course for young artists as part of YOUR.AI coming soon!
As part of the YOUR.AI project, we are finalising work on a course aimed at young artists interested in using artificial intelligence tools in their creative practice. The programme is currently in its final stages of development and will be available soon.
The course has been designed as a comprehensive introduction to working with AI in art – from the critical and cultural context, through the development of artistic practice, to specific tools and applications. The starting point is a shift in perspective: rather than treating AI solely as a technology, the ‘ ’ programme encourages reflection on its impact on contemporary visual culture, the creative process, and the future of artistic practice.
The course structure covers, among other things, issues related to the human–machine relationship, authorship and creativity in the context of AI, as well as an overview of contemporary artistic practices combining digital technologies with analogue activities. Career development is also a key element – including the use of AI in networking, applying for funding and preparing projects.
A separate module is devoted to ethical and environmental challenges: from issues related to access to technology and bias in data, to copyright matters and the carbon footprint of AI tools. The course is complemented by practical guidance on working with specific tools – from designing prompts, through generative systems, to using AI as a partner in the co-creation process.
The programme is practical in nature, yet is embedded within a broader critical context, enabling participants not only to use the tools but also to understand and evaluate them critically. More information coming soon.
The term ‘creative artificial intelligence’ is appearing with increasing frequency in technological and marketing discourse. However, to truly understand what it means to create using AI, it is worth viewing these systems not merely as tools, but as complex socio-technical systems.
Artificial intelligence does not arise in a vacuum – every generated image is based on vast datasets, global computing infrastructure, the work of thousands of people, and specific assumptions regarding creativity, authorship and cultural values.
Therefore, reflecting on art created using AI requires not only technological analysis, but also philosophical, social and historical analysis. Contemporary technology companies are keen to describe their systems as ‘creative’, suggesting that machines can participate in the creative process in much the same way as humans.
Yet the very concept of creativity is neither neutral nor universal – it is historical and cultural in nature. It has been understood differently across different eras: Romanticism linked it to the idea of individual genius, Modernism to originality and a break with tradition, Conceptual Art to the primacy of idea over form, and Postmodernism to the remixing and recombination of existing forms.
In this context, key questions arise today: how should we understand creativity in computational systems, and where does the boundary of agency lie in the human–machine relationship? How does the concept of authorship change when the creative process is distributed among users, algorithms, platforms and data? And how does art created using AI fit into the longer history of the relationship between art and technology – along with inherited ideologies and power structures?
“The contemporary understanding of an artistic career, particularly in the visual arts, is increasingly moving away from a model based solely on institutional education. Whilst art schools remain an essential place for developing technical and theoretical skills, a significant proportion of the skills that determine the sustainability and autonomy of artistic practice are developed outside their structures” – read more in the article by Wenancjusz Ochmann, written specifically as part of the Empowering Youth Talents project.
The article is available in English, Polish, Italian, French and Macedonian.
“Contemporary artistic careers in the visual arts increasingly rarely follow a model based on stable collaboration with a commercial gallery or curatorial representation. Instead, many artists operate as independent practitioners, navigating between various segments of the art world: public institutions, residency programmes, the grant system and the direct sales market. In this context, the key question is not only what skills enable the creation of art, but also what conditions allow it to become a stable source of livelihood” – read more in the article by Wenancjusz Ochmann, written specifically as part of the Empowering Youth Talents project.
The article is available in English, Polish, Italian, French and Macedonian.
“In this way, the machine that gives everything form, style or allows us to click ‘like’ becomes something we can adapt to our needs and desires. If it is true that we live in a narcissistic society, does it bother anyone that artificial intelligence offers us nothing but a hall of mirrors?”
Read more in an inspiring article about Kaspar Hauser and AI written by Weronika Murek especially for the AI4CREATIVITY project.
